Whitehouse, Davina

Davina Whitehouse was born in England and educated privately there and in America. At the age of 15 she went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and, after graduating, worked in the theatre.

Her first good part was with Ivor Novello in a play which was later turned into a film. Then followed 10 years of acting. mainly in films. Shortly after the outbreak of war she was in a play in London, one of the few that continued to run during the blitz. By that time she was engaged to be married, and when the play finally closed she retired for some years to bring up her two sons.

After they all came to New Zealand in 1952. Davina started acting in radio, and later became a radio drama producer, and later working in television and films, both here and in Australia.

N.Z.B.C. production of "An Awful Silence”

The Press. 4 December 1972,

Leading actress Davina Whitehouse, who lead role, Mrs Oliver, commutes into Wellington from her home on the edge of a rocky beach.

Her chief recreation is snorkling over the reef outside her door — perhaps an unexpected activity but then a good deal about her is unexpected. For example, she is well known as an N.Z.B.C. radio drama producer and an actress but her stage and film career reads like a “Who’s Who” of the theatre and is largely unknown in this country.

Educated in England and California, Davina trained at London’s ILA.D.A. where her fellow students included Celia Johnson and Valerie Hobson. She studied there under the late Sir Cedric Hardwicke.

John Geilgud and Edward Chapman starred in the show in which she made her first appearance — the stage production of The Good Companions.

She appeared in I Lived With You with Ivor Novello and when the play was later filmed she re-created her original role.

During the next 10 years she appeared in about 50 films with most of the up-and-coming stars of the day — John Mills, Ida Lupino, Jack Hawkins, Alistair Sim, Will Hay, Edward Everet Horton, Anna Neagle, Elizabeth Bergner — the list goes on and on.

Davina Whitehouse returned to the stage at the beginning of the war but war-time also brought marriage and she left the stage to bring up two sons.

It is now 20 years since she settled in New Zealand with her family, working as a free-lance radio actress before taking on her present job.

Probably her best-known New Zealand stage appearances have been with the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra for the Hoffnung Festival concerts and in Downstage Theatre’s Awatea when she played opposite the late Inia te Wiata.